Absorption

Procedure

• 1. Split the participants into at least three equal teams.

  2. Have the teams sit/stand in a row/line facing the facilitator.

  3. All participants need to be able to see the facilitator.

  4. Each team will designate the order of their rows/lines so that there will always be someone as the first person in line.

  5. The facilitator will choose a team to start by having that team send the first person in their line to the facilitator. 1

  6. That representative will then receive a charade prompt from the facilitator to act out to all the teams.

  7. Anyone from any team can yell out the answer.

  8. If the number of participants is large, everyone yelling out the answer may get chaotic, so have each team designate a representative guesser, and only that person may raise his/her hand to answer. 2

  9. The representative actor (the one who just did the charade) will join whichever team (including his/her original team) correctly guesses the charade first.

  10. This person will go to the back of the line of whichever team he/she joins.

  11. The next team will then send their first person in line to do the next charade.

  12. Each team will take turns sending their first person in line to do the charade until time is up (according to the time delegated to this activity by the facilitator) or when all other teams have only one person remaining.

  13. When a team only has one person remaining, that team skips sending someone to do the charade until someone joins the team.

  14. This means that no team can ever be completely eliminated.

Variations

• 1. Each team should have a designated team captain who never goes up to do the charades, thus never leaves their original team.

  2. In this case, the representative guesser should always be a different person from the team captain.

  3. Elimination style 3

  4. Disregard step 8.

  5. Even when a team has one person remaining, if it’s that team’s turn to send someone up, the last person on that team will do the charade, and thus that team is eliminated. Make this time-based, or have a set number of rounds to prevent all teams from conglomerating into one. If not, eventually, everyone will just join into one team.

Notes

• • 1 If there is an imbalance in the number of people in each team, have the teams with more people be the first to be in the team rotation.

  • 2 If a team’s designated guesser is called up to do the charade, that team will need to choose a new guesser.

• 3 For elimination style, it is best recommended to have more participants and teams for a better experience.